


Pronunciation

by karakael



Category: GaoGaiGar
Genre: F/M, Gen, Names, bridge crew
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-28 22:42:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6348553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karakael/pseuds/karakael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Renais' proves hard to pronounce by the various 3G members.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pronunciation

He said her name right. 

It was as good an explanation as any as to why her heart pounded when he said it, rolling the 'r's like he was born a bare border away rather than across the stretch of time and space.

She hadn't realized how much she had yearned to hear just one more voice say it correctly, almost as deeply as she had yearned for another's touch or a mind that truly understood. 

(To have all three at once, in one man, was such an impossibility that Renais had picked up the habit of pinching herself when he smiled at her, and only stopped when she realized he felt it too.)

"L-lenais." Her father couldn't pronounce it, nor could half of Japan or a single tech on the Orbital Base. 

Swan could, if she wanted, but she liked the "s" too much, spoken out loud while typing up reports on the prodigal daughter. 

"Ren-ace" she said, giggling and bouncing, belying the sharp mind behind the looks of a blonde bimbo.

In some ways it was better than Guy and Mikoto, who simply couldn't hear the difference, but tried anyways - especially Mikoto, who was just too easy to lie to with those big hopeful eyes. Guy would have known, had she asked him to ever say it right, and so she didn't, pretending it didn't bother her. Just another difference. Bad enough being the only Frenchwoman on the ship, bad enough to be treated half-way between a child and a warrior, but to complain about something so unimportant as a name...

(The scientists at Bio-Net hadn't called her by anything. Just "cyborg", mostly. Or her experiment number. Or, later, the number on the warehouse wall where she had been kept. )

"Renee!" Papillon had gotten it closest. Both women had defaulted to Portuguese often, Papillon returning to it like a treasured friend, Renais like a cautious companion, ever wary of 'false friends' between her language and that of her best friend. But hearing Papillon's rolling voice, always a melody no-matter what she spoke of...it was almost heaven.

"Woman." 

It wasn't fair, having one friend ripped away, only to be replaced with a frigid outsider. She was damned determined to make him remember her. Not as a 'woman', not as a 'G-Stone Cyborg', and certainly not because of her relation to the hated 'Shishio' half of her family.

And when he changed - when he saw her for something more - 

"Renais."

She hadn't thought he had remembered. Hadn't thought he would have cared to get it right, hadn't thought he would ever see her as anything more than a means to an end.

"J."

How could a man like him be simplified down into a few numbers. How could anyone see him as disposable? He burned brighter than the stars in her arms, universes opened themselves at his command....

And there, in his arms, she felt the reflection, the mind whispering her name back, tasting the word and all that went with it. 

_Renais_. The girl with the big eyes and the disappearing family. _Renais_. Anger and fire in her blood. _Renais_. So broken, yet never giving up, never wavering, always pushing on. 

A star in miniature, a spark in the dark, a single echo amidst a cacophony of silence. 

How could she be anything but the way she was, perfection eternally changing, syllables running after each other in a sigh, in a song, in a shout across the void. 

A single, impossible, reminder that they were not alone.

_Renais_.


End file.
